Re: dosfslabel finds problem, e2fsck does not

["Thomas H. George" <lists@tomgeorge.info>]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:42:39PM +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 15:53:36 -0400, Thomas H. George wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 09:13:59PM +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 10:25:30 -0400, Thomas H. George wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 08:28:59AM +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote:
> > > > > > > > > On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:25:42 -0400, Thomas H. George wrote:
> > > > > > > > > > My system, Squeeze, cannot install the latest kernel image because
> > > > > > > > > > dosfslabel finds a problem that prevents the installation of linux-base.
> > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > Trying to resolve this I used e2fsck to check each of the disk
> > > > > > > > > > partitions and e2fsck reported all the partitions clean.  However, the
> > > > > > > > > > result of running dosfslabel /dev/hda1 results in the following output:
> > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
> > > > > > > > > > Differences: (offset:original/backup)
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > > Installation of linux-base still fails as described previously and
> > > > dosfslabel /dev/hda1 still gives the error message posted prevously but
> > > > e2fsck /dev/hda1 says it is clean.
> > > 
> > > So we still have to find out why the postinst script runs dosfslabel on
> > > an ext3 partition. Looking at the script, it seems to assemble a list of
> > > filesystems and their types by analyzing /etc/fstab. I would therefore
> > > like to see your output for:
> > > 
> > >   grep -E 'hda1|2428f3c0|vfat|msdos|ntfs' /etc/fstab
> > > 
> > The output is:
> > 
> > /dev/hda1	/temp		ext2	rw,user,auto		0	2
> > /dev/sdc	/media/fuze	vfat	rw,user,noauto		0	0
> > /dev/sg1	/usbdrive	vfat 	rw,user,noauto		0	0
> > /dev/sda	/media/usb1	vfat	rw,user,noauto		0	0
> 
> Nothing here to make the postinst script identify /dev/hda1 as a vfat
> partition. (By the way, why do you have "etx2" instead of "ext3" as the
> type?)
> 
> > I have copied everything on /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda5 on to a backup drive
> > and am considering a complete reformat of /dev/hda.
> 
> I would think that it should be enough to wipe out and reconstruct the
> one problematic partition.
> 
> You can try one more thing before that. Here is a list of all the
> configuration files that the postinst script seems to take into account
> when searching for known block devices (you can run the awk-cut
> combination yourself to make sure that your version of linux-base uses
> the same files):
> 
> $ awk '/my @config_files/,/^$/{if(/path =>.*\//) print $3}' /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-base.postinst | cut -d\' -f2
> /etc/fstab
> /boot/grub/menu.lst
> /etc/default/grub
> /etc/lilo.conf
> /etc/silo.conf
> /etc/quik.conf
> /etc/yaboot.conf
> /etc/elilo.conf
> /etc/default/extlinux
> /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-cd.rules
> /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
> /etc/uswsusp.conf
> /etc/crypttab
> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
> /etc/hdparm.conf
> 
> You can check if one of these files is present on your system and
> mentions /dev/hda1 as type vfat. If that should turn out to be the case
> then it might be enough to remove that reference to solve your problem.

Did all this and found nothing.

Then, since I thought the problem might be buried in the mbr, I used
lilo to write a mbr for my system on /dev/hda, changed BIOS to boot from
/dev/hda and rebooted.  The boot paused in maintenance mode reporting
problems with /dev/hda1.  I ran e2fsck /dev/hda1 which made a number of
corrections.  Following this the system booted normally from the mbr on
/dev/hda.  The problem is now reduced to this, the output of dosfslabel
is now just:

Logical sector size (65280 bytes) is not a multiple of the physical sector size.

What to do?  parted has an option to set alignment for newly created
partitions but can create only ext2 partitions.  gdisk has options for
creating all types of partitions but the man page says nothing about
alignment. 

Recommendations?

Tom
> 
> -- 
> Regards,            |
>           Florian   |
> 
> 
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